The Engineer Investor Housing Plan: Six Reforms, Graded Against the Evidence

I first published the Engineer Investor Housing Plan in November 2025, as a reply to the proposal for 50-year mortgages. Its argument was that in the metros where housing costs the most, the binding problem is how few homes the rules allow, and that financing changes which let buyers borrow more mostly raise prices. That argument has held up well. Much of the rest needed work. The first version cited no evidence, treated some contested policy preferences as settled economics, and set market-rate building against help for low-income renters as if a plan had to choose one.

This revision is the official Summitward and Engineer Investor position on housing. Each of the six reforms below comes with the research I rely on, how confident I am in it, and the strongest objection to it. (Disclosure: I write both Summitward and the Engineer Investor account.)

What Changed Since the First Version

Three things happened after November 2025. The 50-year mortgage was shelved in January 2026. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed the Senate 85 to 5 and the House 358 to 32 and became law on July 11, 2026, without the President’s signature. And the rental market loosened: the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies reports the national rental vacancy rate at 7.3% in early 2026, up from 5.6% in mid-2022, and asking rents down 0.5% from a year earlier, with the steepest declines in heavily building Sunbelt metros while San Francisco rents rose 9%.

That last point shapes the whole plan. Housing is expensive in specific places and for specific households, and a national average hides both.

Where Housing Is Expensive, and for Whom

The Joint Center’s State of the Nation’s Housing 2026 puts the 2025 median price of an existing single-family home at nearly five times median household income, against about 3.2 times in the 1990s. In 2024, 22.7 million renter households, 49% of all renters, spent more than 30% of income on housing, and 12.1 million of them spent more than half. The shortage is deepest at the bottom: the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s The Gap 2026 counts a shortfall of 7.2 million homes affordable and available to extremely low-income renters, or 35 for every 100 such households.

Estimates of the total national shortage vary with method. The Congressional Research Service lists Freddie Mac at 3.7 million, Up for Growth at 3.85 million, Zillow at 4.7 million, Brookings at 4.9 million, and a study for the National Association of Realtors at 5.5 million. The Joint Center reports outside estimates from 1.2 to 5.5 million and, by its own vacancy-based measure, a shortfall that has shrunk by about 900,000 units since 2022. I treat any single national number as a rough summary of many local shortages. Austin’s apartment vacancy rate rose 5 percentage points from 2021 to 2025 after a building boom; coastal metros that build little have no such slack.

Studies of Building More Homes

The studies below agree on direction: where more homes get built, rents end up lower than they otherwise would have been. The size of the effect varies with the market, the reform, and the horizon. These are the studies I give the most weight.

Two results argue for caution. Freemark’s Chicago study shows that rezoning a few parcels can raise their land value without producing a single extra permit, because the right to build more is worth something even when building does not yet pay. And Minneapolis, the reform most often held up in the United States, has mixed evidence. Pew found that from 2017 to 2022 the city’s housing stock grew 12% while rents rose 1%, against 4% and 14% in the rest of Minnesota, a descriptive comparison. A 2025 Minneapolis Fed analysis found rent growth 3.2 points below comparison cities from 2019 to 2023 but attributed most of the gap to a drop in demand for the city in 2020, and said it could not tell whether the 2040 Plan worked.

The cross-city evidence is also contested. Louie, Mondragon and Wieland (NBER w33576, 2025) found that from 2000 to 2020, income growth predicted the same growth in prices, housing, and population whatever a city’s estimated supply elasticity, and concluded that loosening supply rules “may not materially affect housing affordability.” A Dallas Fed paper by Murphy and Shaheen (WP 2635, October 2026) reproduced their result in one specification but found supply constraints significant in others, using annual permit data. I read this debate as a reason to judge reforms by local completions and rents, which the direct studies above do.

One widely quoted number needs a correction. Hsieh and Moretti (2019) estimated that housing limits in New York, San Jose, and San Francisco lowered U.S. growth by 36% from 1964 to 2009. Brian Greaney’s replication (AEJ: Macroeconomics, 2026) traced the result to coding errors and found a corrected effect “two orders of magnitude smaller.” Housing limits still carry real costs; that particular estimate should not be cited.

1. Legalize More Homes Where Demand Is High

Position: allow two to four homes on residential lots, accessory dwelling units, and townhomes by right, under objective standards; cut minimum lot sizes and parking mandates; allow apartments near transit and jobs.

“By right” means a project that meets the written rules gets a permit without a discretionary hearing. That predictability lowers the cost of capital for small builders, who cannot carry a parcel through two years of hearings. Houston shows what lot-size reform can do: in 1998 it cut the minimum lot inside the I-610 Loop from 5,000 to 3,500 square feet and allowed subdivisions averaging 1,400 square feet, then extended the change citywide in 2013, and townhouse construction followed (Gray & Millsap, Mercatus). California shows what accessory dwelling units can add when the state removes local barriers: ADU permits rose from 1,336 in 2016 to 30,354 in 2024, 26.6% of all homes permitted statewide that year, according to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

Washington’s middle-housing law, RCW 36.70A.635 (HB 1110, 2023), is the kind of statewide floor I support. Cities of 75,000 or more must allow at least four homes on every residential lot and six within a quarter mile of major transit; cities of 25,000 to 75,000 must allow two and four. Deadlines follow each county’s comprehensive plan update, from the end of 2024 around Puget Sound to the end of 2026 for Spokane and others, so results will take several more years to measure.

Freemark’s Chicago result sets the design requirement. A zoning change counts only if projects become financially feasible, so height limits, lot coverage, setbacks, impact fees, and review timelines all have to permit the extra homes. Fire safety, water, sewer, and flood-zone rules stay; they should be objective and published in advance.

Strongest objection: density strains schools, roads, and sewers. Infrastructure costs are real, and the answer is to plan and charge for them openly through impact fees tied to actual costs and utility rates, rather than to block homes.

2. Lower the Cost of Building

Position: remove tariffs on building materials, count construction labor in immigration policy, and treat factory-built homes the same as site-built ones wherever they meet performance standards.

Since October 14, 2025, a Section 232 tariff of 10% has applied to imported softwood lumber and timber, and 25% to kitchen cabinets and vanities; a scheduled increase on cabinets to 50% was delayed to January 1, 2027 (Thompson Hine). Canadian softwood lumber also carries anti-dumping and countervailing duties; Commerce’s final results announced in October 2026 set the combined rate for most producers at 24.75%, about 34.75% with the Section 232 tariff (NAHB). In an April 2025 survey, before the Section 232 tariffs, builders estimated that tariffs added about $10,900 to the cost of a typical home. How much of a tariff reaches the buyer depends on competition and the import share of each material, so these figures are an upper bound on the price effect.

Labor is the other large input. Immigrants made up 35% of construction trades workers in 2024, against 18% of the overall labor force, and more than half of drywall installers and painters (Joint Center for Housing Studies). Any immigration policy affects how many homes get built and what they cost.

Construction productivity has stagnated for decades (Goolsbee & Syverson). D’Amico, Glaeser, Gyourko, Kerr and Ponzetto (NBER w33188, 2024) link this to land-use rules that keep projects, and therefore building firms, small; they estimate builders could be about 60% more productive with manufacturing-sized firms if half of the observed link between firm size and productivity is causal. The ROAD to Housing Act took one step here: section 301 lets manufactured homes be built with or without a permanent chassis and requires states to treat both types the same.

3. Make Housing Taxes Less Distortionary

Position: no new tax breaks that raise what owners can bid; oppose removing the cap on the home-sale exclusion; let states authorize local split-rate property taxes that fall more on land than on buildings, phased in over years.

The first version of this plan aimed at the mortgage interest deduction. Treasury’s own estimates show why that was the wrong target.

The largest housing tax break is invisible on any tax form. A landlord pays tax on rent, net of interest, property tax, maintenance, and depreciation. An owner-occupier is in effect their own landlord but pays no tax on the rent they would otherwise collect from themselves. Treasury puts the cost of excluding that imputed rent at $157.4 billion in fiscal 2026. The capital gains exclusion on home sales costs $85.4 billion. The mortgage interest deduction, at $24.5 billion, is the smallest owner subsidy in the chart, because the 2017 tax law roughly doubled the standard deduction and capped the debt that qualifies at $750,000. Only 9.5% of 2022 returns itemized, per IRS Statistics of Income. The 2025 tax law then raised the SALT cap to $40,400 for 2026, which is why Treasury’s property tax deduction estimate jumps from $21.1 billion in fiscal 2025 to $25.8 billion in 2026 and falls back to $14.7 billion in 2030, when the cap reverts to $10,000.

Taxing imputed rent is not on any realistic agenda, and I do not propose it. The practical goal is to stop adding owner subsidies and to reform existing ones slowly. Denmark offers the best evidence on what happens when a mortgage deduction is cut. Studying a late-1980s reform, Gruber, Jensen and Kleven (2021) found “a precisely estimated zero effect on homeownership” for middle- and high-income households, while the deduction had led people to buy larger houses and borrow more, and its reduction “lowered equilibrium house prices.” Lower prices are the goal for future buyers and a loss for current owners, which is the case for phasing changes in.

The home-sale exclusion: oppose uncapping, indexing is defensible

Section 121 lets a married couple exclude $500,000 of gain on a primary residence ($250,000 for a single filer). The caps were set in 1997 and have never been indexed to inflation. Two bills would change that. H.R. 4327, the No Tax on Home Sales Act, would remove the cap entirely. The More Homes on the Market Act (S. 3332 and H.R. 1340) would double the caps and index them. Neither has passed either chamber.

I oppose removing the cap. The exclusion already costs more than three times the mortgage deduction, and an uncapped version would send its largest benefits to owners with the biggest gains, concentrated in the expensive coastal metros where supply is most constrained, which is where a subsidy is most likely to raise prices.

Indexing is a closer call, because the lock-in is real and an unindexed cap tightens every year. After the 1997 law created the current exclusion, sales of homes with gains under $500,000 in 16 affluent Boston-area towns rose 19% to 24% (Shan, Journal of Public Economics, 2011). A study commissioned by the National Association of Realtors estimates that 34% of homeowners already have gains above the $250,000 single-filer cap, but that compares every owner with the single cap and counts potential gains, not tax owed. Using 2022 Federal Reserve survey data, Gale, Patel, Rogers and Sabelhaus (Brookings, 2026) find that 95% of households would owe no federal tax on a home sale today, and that doubling the caps would send 76% of the benefit to the top tenth of households. I would index the caps from here, so the lock-in stops growing with inflation, and skip the doubling.

Tax land more than buildings, gradually

A conventional property tax charges the same rate on the land and on whatever is built on it, so adding a fourplex raises the tax bill. A split-rate tax charges a higher rate on land value and a lower one on buildings. Land in a given location is fixed in supply, so taxing it does not discourage its creation, while a lower rate on buildings reduces the penalty on building more. Pennsylvania has the longest U.S. record. Banzhaf and Lavery (2010) found that Pennsylvania’s split-rate taxes raised density from 1970 to 2000 mainly through more housing units rather than larger ones. Pittsburgh raised its land rate to more than five times its building rate in 1979–80 and saw construction rise relative to comparison cities, but Oates and Schwab (1997) credit the tax with only a supporting role next to a downtown redevelopment program and strong demand for office space.

The obstacles are practical. Assessors must value land separately from buildings, which most do poorly. Owners of valuable land with modest incomes, often older homeowners, can face higher bills, and a full land value tax may not be optimal once distribution is counted (Schwerhoff, Edenhofer and Fleurbaey, IMF WP/22/263). Detroit’s split-rate plan stalled in the Michigan legislature in 2024. I support state laws that let cities choose a split rate, with revenue neutrality in the first year, a phase-in over several years, and tax deferral for owners who are asset-rich and cash-poor. Summitward covers the incidence questions in Are Property Taxes Regressive?

4. Build a Safety Net That Reaches Renters

Position: expand housing vouchers and pair them with search help and landlord outreach; keep capital subsidies for deeply affordable and supportive housing; oppose broad rent control.

The first version said “subsidize users, not hardware.” Vouchers deserve to be the core of the safety net because they let families choose where to live and move for work. They are also rationed: about one in four eligible households receives federal rental assistance, a rough estimate the Congressional Research Service reproduces from roughly 4.8 million assisted renters against 19.3 million very-low-income renters in 2021.

Vouchers also depend on families finding landlords who will take them. In the Creating Moves to Opportunity randomized trial in Seattle and King County, a package of individualized search help, landlord engagement, and short-term financial assistance raised the share of voucher families moving to high-upward-mobility neighborhoods from 15% to 53%. That matters because, in the earlier Moving to Opportunity experiment, children whose families moved to lower-poverty areas before age 13 earned 31% more in their mid-20s (Chetty, Hendren and Katz, 2016).

The first version also claimed that without more supply, vouchers “just cause inflation.” The evidence supports a narrower version. Susin (2002), comparing the 90 largest metros, estimated that vouchers raised rents for low-income renters by about 16%, enough that unassisted renters lost more than recipients gained, though later work questions whether other local factors drove that correlation. Eriksen and Ross (2015) followed individual units through the 2000–2002 voucher expansion and found no change in overall rents, with increases concentrated in supply-constrained metros such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York and none measurable in Atlanta, Houston, or Cleveland. When Dallas housing authorities raised voucher rent ceilings, landlords captured much of the increase, while ceilings set by ZIP code moved families to safer, lower-poverty neighborhoods at no extra cost (Collinson and Ganong, 2018). Vouchers stretch furthest where building is easy, which is one more reason to pair them with the supply reforms above.

Capital subsidies still have a place. Some households need housing with services attached, and in tight markets the private sector cannot build at rents extremely low-income households can pay. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit costs $15.3 billion a year and is expensive per unit: for projects completed from 2011 to 2015, median new-construction costs at 12 state agencies ranged from about $126,000 per unit in Texas to $326,000 in California (GAO-18-637). Whether it adds homes on net is disputed: Eriksen and Rosenthal (2010) found crowd-out of private building close to complete, with wide confidence bands, while Baum-Snow and Marion (2009) found it mainly in gentrifying areas. I would hold the credit to cost-per-household comparisons against vouchers rather than expand it by default.

Rent control

I oppose broad rent control. San Francisco’s 1994 expansion of rent control to small multifamily buildings is the best-studied case. Diamond, McQuade and Qian (2019) found that covered tenants were about 20% less likely to move out, a real benefit, while landlords of covered buildings cut the supply of rental housing by 15%, largely by converting to condos and owner occupancy. The working-paper version estimated that the lost supply raised rents citywide by 5.1% (NBER w24181), a cost borne by every future renter.

Caps that exempt new buildings avoid the worst of this. Oregon limits annual increases to the lesser of 10% or 7% plus inflation, and California to the lesser of 10% or 5% plus regional inflation, and both exempt buildings for 15 years after they are first occupied. St. Paul shows what happens without the exemption. Its 2021 ballot measure capped increases at 3% a year with no carve-out for new construction; Ahern and Giacoletti (NBER, 2022) estimated it cut affected property values by 6% to 7%. The city added a 20-year exemption for new buildings in 2023 and in 2025 exempted everything built after 2004. Permits fell from more than 2,000 units a year in 2020 and 2021 to 357 in 2025, though interest rates rose over the same period and the Minneapolis Fed says it lacks hard data to separate the causes. I can accept Oregon- or California-style caps that bind only on outlier increases and exempt new buildings; I oppose caps that bind in ordinary years or cover new construction.

5. The Federal Role After the ROAD to Housing Act

Position: reward local housing growth with federal grants and formula bonuses; drop the first version’s threat to withhold all infrastructure money; repeal the large-investor purchase ban unless the required GAO review finds it helped buyers without raising rents.

The ROAD to Housing Act (Public Law 119-101) does not override local zoning. Its main supply provisions, as summarized by the Congressional Research Service:

• Section 107: HUD must publish model zoning and land-use frameworks by July 2029. Adopting them is voluntary.
• Section 207: a competitive pilot of planning and implementation grants, to start by July 2027.
• Section 208: an Innovation Fund of $200 million a year for fiscal 2027 through 2031, for local governments that show an objective improvement in housing supply growth. This is an authorization; Congress still has to appropriate the money.
• Section 213, the Build Now Act: from fiscal 2029, large-city and urban-county recipients of Community Development Block Grants whose housing growth improved less than the median lose 10% of their grant, which is redistributed to faster-growing places. Low-cost markets, places with above-average rental vacancy, recent disaster areas, and places with very fast growth (4% a year or more) are exempt from cuts.
• Section 1001: starting January 7, 2027, for 15 years, investors controlling 350 or more single-family homes may not buy more, with exceptions including build-to-rent, homes built or renovated for sale, and substantial renovations.

HUD’s separate PRO Housing grants, which reward localities for removing barriers to housing, continue with $50 million for fiscal 2026.

The first version proposed giving cities full federal infrastructure funding only if they legalized duplexes and triplexes. I have dropped that. The Supreme Court allowed Congress to withhold 5% of highway funds from states that did not raise their drinking age (South Dakota v. Dole, 1987), but struck down a threat to cut off all existing Medicaid funding as coercive (NFIB v. Sebelius, 2012); see CRS R44797. A threat to all infrastructure money would invite the same challenge, and carrying it out would punish residents for decisions made by their city council.

Build Now: the case for and against

Build Now is closest to the first version’s idea of tying federal money to local results. The case for it: the penalty is small enough to survive legal challenge, it measures what matters (housing units counted by the Census Bureau’s address files) rather than plans or promises, and it exempts places where housing is cheap or vacancies are high. The case against: unit growth reflects demand and the supply of buildable land as well as local rules, so a built-out city that reforms its zoning could still be cut, and a 10% change in a block grant may be too small to change any city council’s vote. I have no settled view, and the first cuts in fiscal 2029 will show whether the formula separates permissive places from merely growing ones.

The investor purchase ban

I am skeptical of section 1001. Large investors own a small share of homes nationally, concentrated in a few Sunbelt metros. Citing the Urban Institute, the GAO (2024) counted about 450,000 homes held by investors with at least 1,000 homes each as of June 2022, about 3% of single-family rentals nationally, but roughly 25% of single-family rentals in metro Atlanta, 21% in Jacksonville, and 18% in Charlotte, figures GAO says may be overstated.

The research on their effects cuts both ways. Where mergers concentrated ownership, rents rose about half a percent more and crime fell (Gurun, Wu, Xiao and Xiao, Review of Financial Studies, 2023). In a working paper, Coven estimates that each home bought by institutional investors reduced owner-occupied homes by 0.23 and added 0.56 rentals, that rents fell on net, and that a ban would raise rents by shrinking rental supply. A model of Atlanta by Barbieri and Dobbels finds that returning investor-owned homes to their earlier use would raise rents 3.3% and lower sale prices 3.2%. And Garriga, Gete and Tsouderou (2023) find that most investor-driven price pressure came from small and medium local investors, whom the 350-home threshold does not touch.

So the ban trades somewhat higher rents for somewhat cheaper starter homes in a handful of metros, and adds no homes. Its exemption for build-to-rent keeps the investor activity that does add supply. I would let it lapse or repeal it unless the GAO review the law requires finds clear gains for buyers without higher rents.

6. Keep Households Able to Move

Position: treat mortgage lock-in and tax lock-in as housing-supply problems, and pilot assumable or portable mortgages.

Owners who locked in a low rate are reluctant to sell, which keeps existing homes off the market. Fonseca and Liu (Journal of Finance, 2024), using individual credit records, estimate that each percentage point by which a borrower’s rate sits below the market rate cuts the probability of moving by 9%. A Federal Reserve study (Aladangady, Krimmel and Scharlemann) attributes 44% of the 2021–22 drop in mobility among mortgage borrowers to lock-in.

FHA, VA, and USDA loans, roughly a fifth of mortgage balances, can be assumed by a buyer with lender approval, but only a few thousand assumptions happen each year. FHFA Director Bill Pulte said in November 2025 that the agency was evaluating portable mortgages; no program exists as of October 2026. Letting a borrower carry a low rate to a new home would cost lenders and investors something, so it has to be priced, but the gain is a housing stock that turns over when households’ needs change.

As for the 50-year mortgage: a longer term lowers the monthly payment by about 11% on a $400,000 loan at 6.5% and builds almost no equity for a decade, and in supply-constrained markets the extra borrowing power gets bid into prices. The full analysis is in Why a 50-Year Mortgage Won’t Fix Housing Affordability.

How to Tell Whether It Is Working

Rezoned acreage and dollars spent are inputs. These are the outcomes I would track for any city or state that adopts these reforms.

What This Means for Your Money

Housing policy affects both the price of the shelter you consume and the value of the house you may own, and those can pull in opposite directions.

• Owning hedges your future rent. Sinai and Souleles (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005) show that renting is also risky, because rents can rise, and that owning reduces that risk for households who expect to stay a long time. If you plan to stay in an expensive metro for decades, a rise in local home values is mostly a rise in the cost of the housing you consume. If you plan to sell and move somewhere cheaper, the gain is money you can spend. That is one reason Summitward suggests caution about counting your home in your FI number.
• Supply reform can lower incumbents’ home values. That is the intended effect for future buyers and renters. Owners in constrained metros should not assume past appreciation rates will continue if reforms like Auckland’s spread.
• Know the dates. The $40,400 SALT cap returns to $10,000 in 2030. The investor purchase ban starts January 7, 2027. The cabinet and vanity tariff is scheduled to rise to 50% on January 1, 2027. Build Now cuts begin in fiscal 2029.
• Run your own numbers. The decision to rent or buy depends on price, rent, horizon, taxes, and what your down payment would earn elsewhere. See Rent vs. Buy and The True Cost of Owning a Home.

What Would Change My Mind

• Broad, statewide upzonings in high-demand U.S. markets, such as Washington’s, that fail to raise completions within five to seven years of taking effect.
• Replications that confirm Louie, Mondragon and Wieland’s finding that supply elasticity does not predict price growth across cities.
• Split-rate pilots that show no gain in housing density relative to comparable cities.
• Evidence that voucher expansions raise rents for unassisted low-income renters by more than they help recipients.
• Data showing that large investors’ purchases lowered homeownership or raised rents enough to justify the purchase ban.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does building luxury apartments help lower-income renters?

The best evidence says yes, with a lag and through moving chains. Mast (2023) traced the prior homes of residents in new market-rate buildings and estimated that 100 new units open about 70 units in below-median-income neighborhoods in his baseline case. Asquith, Mast and Reed (2023) found rents within 250 meters of large new buildings in low-income areas about 6% lower than for units slightly farther away.

Is there a national housing shortage?

Estimates range from about 1.2 million to 5.5 million homes depending on method, and the Joint Center’s vacancy-based measure has shrunk since 2022. The shortage is concentrated in high-demand metros and at rents extremely low-income households can afford, where the National Low Income Housing Coalition counts a gap of 7.2 million homes.

Would ending the mortgage interest deduction lower home prices?

Somewhat, and less than it once would have. Denmark’s cut lowered house prices without changing homeownership among middle- and high-income households. In the U.S. the deduction now costs Treasury about $24.5 billion a year because few households itemize, while the untaxed imputed rent of owner-occupied homes costs about $157 billion.

What is a split-rate property tax?

A property tax with a higher rate on land value than on buildings. It lowers the tax cost of building more on a lot and raises the cost of holding valuable land idle. Several Pennsylvania cities have used one.

Does the ROAD to Housing Act override local zoning?

No. It asks HUD to publish voluntary zoning frameworks, funds grants for places that add housing, and from fiscal 2029 trims block grants for large cities whose housing growth lags. Local governments still write their own zoning codes.

Is this plan good or bad for current homeowners?

Mixed. Reforms that add homes can slow price growth in constrained metros, which lowers paper wealth for owners who plan to stay put and cash out later. The same reforms lower the cost of trading up, help owners’ children afford homes, and widen the pool of workers and businesses in a region.

Key Takeaways

• Housing is expensive in specific places. Rental vacancy reached 7.3% nationally in early 2026, while high-cost metros that build little still face rising rents.
• Building more lowers rents relative to the alternative. Auckland’s broad upzoning is associated with rents 23% below a synthetic no-reform estimate after eight years; small, scattered upzonings have a weaker record.
• The largest owner subsidy is untaxed imputed rent. Treasury puts it at $157 billion for fiscal 2026, against $24.5 billion for the mortgage interest deduction.
• Vouchers work better with help attached. Search assistance raised moves to high-opportunity neighborhoods from 15% to 53% in a randomized trial.
• The federal law relies on incentives. The ROAD to Housing Act rewards and penalizes local growth through grants; it does not preempt zoning.

Related Guides

• Why a 50-Year Mortgage Won’t Fix Housing Affordability: the borrower math and why longer loans raise prices.
• Are Property Taxes Regressive?: who bears property taxes, and what a land value tax would change.
• Rent vs. Buy: the household decision inside the policy debate.
• The True Cost of Owning a Home: cash, economic, and exit costs.
• Will Demographics Crash Home Prices?: why supply rules shape how prices respond to population change.
• Liberal Techno-Optimism: the broader worldview behind this plan.

Sources

Each claim above links to its primary source. The core references, with what each does and does not establish, are kept with revision history in the housing-plan repository.

• Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, The State of the Nation’s Housing 2026 (June 2026).
• U.S. Treasury Office of Tax Analysis, Tax Expenditures FY2027 (December 16, 2025; law as of July 31, 2025).
• Congressional Research Service, The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (P.L. 119-101), R49354 (September 17, 2026).
• Greenaway-McGrevy and So, “Can Zoning Reform Reduce Housing Costs? Evidence from Rents in Auckland,” Economic Inquiry 64(4), 2026, doi:10.1111/ecin.70075.
• Mast, “The Effect of New Market-Rate Housing Construction on the Low-Income Housing Market,” Journal of Urban Economics 133, 2023, doi:10.1016/j.jue.2021.103383.
• Bergman, Chetty, DeLuca, Hendren, Katz and Palmer, “Creating Moves to Opportunity,” American Economic Review 114(5), 2024, AEA.
• Gruber, Jensen and Kleven, “Do People Respond to the Mortgage Interest Deduction?” AEJ: Economic Policy 13(2), 2021, AEA.
• Diamond, McQuade and Qian, “The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality,” American Economic Review 109(9), 2019, AEA.
• Greaney, “Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation: Comment,” AEJ: Macroeconomics 18(2), 2026, AEA.

This article states the author’s policy views and is educational, not financial advice. Laws, tariffs, and program funding are current as of October 18, 2026.